PAOLI, PASQUALE. — Corsican patriot, born at La Stretta di Morosaglia on 26 April 1725, died in London on 5 February 1807. At fourteen, after the island revolt against the Republic of Genoa had been subdued, he followed his father, Giacinto, into exile in Naples, where he attended the schools of the most renowned teachers. In 1741 he entered the Bourbon army in the “Corsica” regiment, composed almost entirely of Corsicans. He always maintained contact with the leading Corsicans until, elected supreme head of the nation, he returned to the island and resumed the struggle against the Genoese government, gradually wresting from it all the inland regions until reducing it to the fortified points on the coast. He then had an entire body of laws worthy of a free people approved by the National Consulta, promoted agriculture, and founded the University of Corte, calling to teach there masters, all Corsicans, of proven merit and belonging to religious Orders.
In 1760, as the war with the Republic of Genoa continued and disorder in ecclesiastical discipline persisted, P. asked Clement XIII for an apostolic visitor; and the latter was sent in the person of Msgr. Crescenzio De Angelis, bishop of Segni. The Genoese government placed a bounty on the person of the papal envoy, but without result. In 1767 P. offered broad hospitality on the island to the Jesuits expelled from Spain and America.
The following year Genoa ceded possession of Corsica to France; P. protested and for about a year held his ground against the more powerful enemy; but after the defeat at Ponte Nuovo (10 May 1769) he was forced to surrender and take refuge in London. In 1790, at the beginning of the French Revolution, he was able to return to his homeland and was appointed president of the departmental administration. During the first two years he followed the directives of the government in Paris; but then, unable in conscience to consent to the excesses of the Jacobin Party and the National Convention, he was suspended from his functions and invited to defend himself before the Assembly. Instead, he organized a new local government and requested aid and protection from the British government, offering King George sovereignty over the island. Having failed to obtain for himself the hoped-for office of viceroy, he departed, disappointed, for his final exile in London, where he lived universally esteemed and honored.